In print shop environments, content from multiple sources is often merged to create a new document. For example, in the production of an illustrated calendar, photographs may be scanned to produce the calendar illustrations. The scans are then interleaved with calendar pages, which may have been produced in a page layout program or a word processor. Generally, before the document is output to a color printer, additional layout and job options are specified, such as single-side vs. duplex printing, resolution, color profile, and print profile. In particular, page imposition, in which selected individual pages are imposed on a single sheet, is an extremely useful layout option. The individual pages are arranged on the sheet to yield a proper page sequence in the finished document.
Page imposition is generally a technique for ordering the pages that make up a document on sheets in such a manner as to facilitate organizing the pages of the final printed document into the correct page sequence using post-printing processing techniques such as folding, cutting, collating, and binding. Page imposition greatly facilitates post-printing processes such as collating, cutting, and binding, so that a printed document with the pages in the correct orders results.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a prior art graphical user interface (GUI) 10 from a print shop system that allows a user to implement page imposition via a program layout by defining rows and columns. The GUI 10 displays a variety of a graphically displayed buttons, icons, menus, dialog box, and so on, such as, for example, icons 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, and 28, which when accessed by a user provides, respectively, basic settings, paper stock, output, image quality, color management, image placement, image edit, special pages, and time stamps. Buttons 32, 34 provide for row and column settings, and icon 30 when accessed by a user provides for a layout type setting. Other graphical buttons or Icons include, for example, a widget 40 for sheet orientation, a radio button 46 for performing reduce/enlarge operations (i.e., “Fit to Page”), a radio button 44 for settings with respect to the outside margin, a radio button 42 for setting the outside margin, a widget 38 for selecting paper stock (e.g., letter-sized, legal-sized, etc.), a widget 36 for selecting a particular sequence, and a graphically displayed grid 48 that displays front and back parameters. Based on the grid 48, images can be applied. The GUI shown in FIG. 1, however, does not provide for an option to merge logical cells or to apply a page order/rotation to the image.
Thus, in prior art print shop systems such as the print system associated with the GUI 10 show in FIG. 1, a user is allowed to utilize a defined layout during the imposition process based on rows on columns. Images can be placed based on the grid 48. One of the problems with this approach, however, is that the user cannot navigate across the grid 48 to select rows and columns to merge and print. The user is simply unable to change the page order, orientation, and image rotation with respect to logical cells utilizing the GUI 10.